Publications

Despite the growing scale of forced displacement involving children and youth, our understanding of this phenomenon is severely limited by significant gaps in the availability of both relevant data and data-driven research. According to UNICEF, there is recorded data by age for just 56 percent of the refugee population under UNHCR’s mandate, while IDMC notes that just 14 percent of countries and territories with reported internally displaced populations provide data on age. The following edition of the Joint Data Center Quarterly Digest, jointly produced by UNICEF and the JDC, spotlights several recent data-driven contributions addressing these critical gaps in knowledge. We focus, in particular, on mental health risks faced by forcibly displaced children; evidence from existing evaluations and assessments on ‘what works’; and emerging research into the use of technological innovations for the management of child migration and displacement data. Taken together, this literature selection offers examples of the kinds of credible, actionable evidence which practitioners and policymakers urgently need to better support those who are forcibly displaced around the world, regardless of age.

In the 2016–17 school year, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), in partnership with the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and in coordination with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MEHE) in Lebanon, started to pilot a child-focused cash transfer programme for displaced Syrian children in Lebanon. The programme, known as the No Lost Generation (NLG) or “Min Ila” (meaning “from/to”) was designed to reduce negative coping strategies harmful to children and reduce barriers to children’s school attendance, including financial barriers and reliance on child labour. UNICEF Lebanon contracted the American Institute for Research (AIR) to help UNICEF Office of Research (OoR) design and implement an impact evaluation of the programme. The purpose of the impact evaluation, one of the first rigorous studies of a social protection programme supporting children in a complex displacement setting, is to monitor the programme’s effects on recipients and provide evidence to UNICEF, WFP, and MEHE for decisions regarding the programme’s future. This report investigates and discusses the programme’s impacts on child well-being outcomes, including food security, health, child work, child subjective well-being, enrollment, and attendance, after 1 year of programme implementation.

This volume represents the first systematic attempt to showcase the breadth and depth of UNICEF's research work. At the end of 2012, the Office of Research invited UNICEF's country and regional offices, national committees and headquarters to submit recent examples of research for children. Some 91 submissions of research were received and ten were selected to illustrate the best of UNICEF research. The result is a compilation of research activities that covers themes as diverse as the scaling up of early child development and the impact of repatriation on children's lives, and covers geographical areas from latin America to to Asia and from Africa to Europe.

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive review of the existing literature on the political economy of CPLs with the specific intention of mapping the relevant channels of impact on the rights and well-being of children living in rural areas where CPLs are fast-proliferating. Although there are some documented benefits, according to the large majority of the literature reviewed, the twin outcomes of displacement and dispossession are found to be critical negative socio-economic changes resulting from CPLs. In conjunction with a pervasive lack of transparency in the land transfer negotiation and implementation processes, the twin outcomes are in turn associated with a number of transmission channels that can impact the rights and well-being of children in affected rural communities.

L’obligation de poursuivre et de punir les crimes graves stipulée dans le droit international et la volonté d’apporter réparation aux victimes ont conduit à l’élaboration d’approches de justice transitionnelle destinées à sanctionner la violence de masse ou les abus systématiques. Jusqu’à récemment, les violations à l’encontre des enfants n’étaient pas distinguées de la masse d’atrocités commises contre les populations civiles en général. Les commissions vérité constituent l’un des moyens pour commencer à réparer les torts faits aux enfants, aux familles et aux communautés pendant un conflit armé.

Children are often brutally targeted in modern warfare. Accountability mechanisms have begun to focus on crimes committed against children during armed conflict and to involve children proactively, including through testimony that bears witness to their experiences. But if children are to engage in transitional justice processes, their rights must be respected. This publication is intended to inform the work of truth commissions, child protection advocates and organizations, legal experts and other professionals in efforts to protect the rights of children involved in truth and reconciliation processes. It includes an analysis of emerging good practices and recommends policies and procedures for children’s participation in truth commissions.

This paper analyses the extent to which international and ‘mixed’ or ‘hybrid’ criminal courts, in particular the International Criminal Court (ICC), have focused on crimes against children and dealt with children as victims, witnesses and potential offenders. The paper underlines the major role played recently by international courts, notably the Special Court for Sierra Leone, followed by the ICC, in criminalizing as war crimes the conscription or enlistment of children and their use to participate actively in hostilities. The Special Court was the first to hand down convictions for these crimes. The first cases before the ICC also concern the unlawful recruitment of children for their use in hostilities, bringing these crimes to the fore.

The research theme was identified within the framework of the European Network for the Research Agenda on Children in Armed Conflict and has been developed by UNICEF IRC with the co-operation of a number of Network partners and UNICEF offices in the field. It reviews the problem of non-registration in conflict-affected countries while drawing on case studies to analyze successful or promising initiatives to ensure registration. The ultimate goal is to assist practitioners in the field in conflict and post-conflict environments to promote emerging encouraging practices in ensuring the right of the child to birth registration and thereby to the enjoyment of many rights.

In 1997, UNICEF’s first international Child Protection Officer, Ben Majekodunmi, took up his post in Burundi. This publication summarizes his experience and draws lessons for future child protection activities in emergency situations. Primarily aimed at UNICEF and UN policy makers, the publication calls for the creation of a systematic child protection capacity in the field as an integral part of an overall UN strategy. The development of an agreed methodology for child rights protection in the field is still in its embryonic stages. As UNICEF’s main research arm, the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre explores new areas on behalf of the organization as a whole. This document, based upon first-hand experience, is one part of the Centre’s contribution to the development of such methodology within UNICEF and within the UN as a whole.

La guerra non può giovare ai bambini che ne soffrono in modo particolare, essendo essi innocenti e indifesi. Basti pensare alle categorie considerate in questo Rapporto: bambini di strada; bambini portatori di handicap; orfani, bambini soli, bambini abbandonati, rifugiati e profughi. Non possiamo immaginare il profondo effetto psico-sociale che l’abbandono, lo smarrimento, la solitudine abbia su un bambino che si trova circondato dalla violenza della guerra. E cosa succede ai bambini portatori di handicap o ai bambini malati di AIDS?

Cet Innocenti Insight est un examen critique - et en aucun cas une évaluation officelle - de quelques-uns des principaux aspects des activités de coopération internationale en faveur des enfants au Rwanda entre juillet 1994 et décembre 1996, dans l'optique du respect et de la promotion de l'esprit et de la lettre de la Convention des Nationes Unies relative aux droits de l'enfant. L'étude a pour objet la situation dans le Rwanda d'après le géocide, mais avec, tout naturellemente, des incidences et des échos sur d'autres situations d'après-guerre.

Starting from Zero is a critical review of some of the main facets of the international cooperation undertaken on behalf of children in Rwanda from July 1994 to December 1996, with special reference to its consonance with, and promotion of, the spirit and the letter of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The study aims to contribute to the development of a coherent long-term policy on child-related issues as an integral part of the reconstruction, recovery and reconciliation process in post-conflict situations, using to the full the Convention as both a guide for action and a tool for stimulating and facilitating that action.Taking as its main base the experience of UNICEF, the study also considers other actors, particularly the foreign non-governmental community, in attempting to determine the real impact of the Convention on approach and programming. While the focus of the study is on the events that took place in post-genocide Rwanda, there are inevitably ramifications for and links with other post-conflict situations.